Williamson knew his future business opportunities rested on what he said and did in that mad minute, so he did his homework before stepping on the plane and spoke to someone who had done it all before.

That was South Australia's Foursticks, the first Australian company to win a coveted DEMOgod award, at last year's showcase.

Foursticks won its DEMOgod award for its NP Pro software that automatically allots optimal bandwidth to the web application in use, while allowing other applications to download in the background. "They were very helpful and we got lots of advice," Williamson says.

The Intelledox software centrally controls Microsoft Word templates to ensure documents are consistent and adhere to corporate standards of style and content.

Williamson employed the children's game of Chinese whispers in his 60-second elevator pitch to help them stand out from the crowd and to illustrate the problem Intelledox solved. Three people were on stage passing a message from one to the other. The message became progressively corrupted as it was passed on.

With businesses in the US and elsewhere obsessed with issues of corporate governance compliance, the message reverberated and the demonstration received a huge response. And with that simple but effective play, Intelledox became Australia's second DEMOgod award winner.

Williamson's odd challenge began last October when his company was one of four Australian developers to be selected to go to DEMO from the annual ANZA Tech showcase.

DPM is setting up office in San Jose, California, and has a couple of strong sales leads with US corporations. Users of Intelledox include the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and the University of Western Sydney.

Original story: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Next/Canberra-minute-man-becomes-DEMOgod/2005/02/28/1109546786167.html?from=moreStories.